Saving For Your Future Self: The Role of Imaginary Experiences

Despite increased longevity, many people fail to save the funds necessary to support their retirement. In an attempt both to elucidate and remedy this failing, research exploring the ‘future-self continuity’ hypothesis has revealed that temporal discounting is decreased and saving increased when connections between one’s current and future self are strengthened. Here we explored the possibility that a basic component of mental imagery — spatial visual perspective — may be an important determinant of people’s decisions to spend now or save for the future. The results of two experiments supported this prediction. Rates of saving were enhanced when a distant-future event was generated from a third-person versus first-person vantage point, an effect that was mediated by visual bodily awareness during mental imagery.